Full of delicious sugary good-feeling, I realise my father’s been considerate of my diet since I arrived, even though it’s foreign to him.

‘Thanks for thinking of the gelatine,’ I say, ‘and the soy cheese and almond milk and everything.’

He smiles.

After Jaxon tries to call his father again with the satellite phone, he takes out his guitar and starts picking a melancholy tune. I watch the fire, wondering if Melody made it safely to the festival. Then my thoughts turn again to Oliver. His dad disappeared in a way, too, after his parents divorced. Even though his dad doesn’t live far away, they almost never see each other, and Oliver’s mum works full-time running her small organic grocery in town and brings up Oliver and Sabine alone. Not that you’d know it’s hard for her—she’s quick to smile, and since Oliver and I started going out, she’s always made me feel welcome. Just last week she gave me all her new skin-care samples to try out—peach, cinnamon and pear—whatever I like best, she’s going to order for the store. His family has become a second one for me. As much as I love Paula and Dave, it’s nice to have another one to fall back on. If the last year’s taught me anything, it’s that you never know when you’ll need a Plan B. I imagine Oliver’s arms around me and shiver a little.

My father pulls out a pack of cards and we start playing; it’s a super-fast game of luck called Speed, and soon we’re shouting and laughing, tying in points and pretending to accuse each other of cheating.

‘Tell me about life back home,’ he says after we’ve finally calmed down.

I put down the cards and begin to talk. I tell him how I was pulled away from my home, city and everything I knew, and thrown into Paula and Dave’s house in their teensy country town. I finally made friends but it all changed when I adopted my chicken, Chirp. I take a breath. ‘Actually,’ I confess, ‘I stole her from a broiler farm I snuck into when I was doing a school project.’

He raises his eyebrows.

I admit how I can sometimes be overtaken by my emotions—not mentioning how, when I was little, I’d have temper tantrums and throw things around, stamping my feet like a crazy person. No need to go into all the details. I also don’t include the fact that after I stole Chirp, I literally fled the farm, the scene of the crime, and had to escape under a fence.

I do tell him how later I had the worst luck—the farm was owned by the father of the girl I thought was my new bestie, Marissa, aka Queen of Popularity.